Key US senators from both political parties and White House cabinet officers reached a tentative agreement on immigration reform on Thursday, after weeks of negotiations. The proposal, which President Bush calls "secure, productive, orderly, and fair" , gives more weight to an immigrant's education level than his family connections in the US when awarding green [...]

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A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney urged a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit brought by former CIA operative Valerie Plame against members of the Bush administration, arguing that the lawsuit is based on "fanciful claims." Plame filed the lawsuit last year, alleging that White House officials violated her constitutional rights to free speech, [...]

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UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour Thursday denounced the poor conditions of prisons in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during a visit there, deploring in particular overcrowding and inadequate access to justice. Three thousand people are imprisoned at the CPRK (Centre Penitentiare et de Réeducation de Kinshasa), the largest prison in DRC's [...]

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Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) , the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, predicted Thursday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will resign from his post at the conclusion of current investigations into the allegedly-political firings of federal prosecutors . Specter's comments followed others made by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) Wednesday, who suggested that by remaining [...]

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Ivan Dombrovsky, chairperson of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine , resigned without elaboration Thursday as the 18-judge court continued to deliberate the constitutionality of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's April 2 decree dissolving parliament and calling for new elections. The Constitutional Court has appointed Deputy Chair Valery Pshenichny to be the new chief justice. Pshenichny was [...]

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The African Commission on Human and People's Rights will review alleged human rights violations committed by Zimbabwe after African non-governmental organizations placed the issue on the agenda of ACHPR's 41st session, which began Wednesday. In an interview with VOA News, Wilbert Mandinde, legal advisor to the Zimbabwe Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa [...]

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